Mothers are the keepers of lives entrusted by God in every generation. Once I understood that it was through Jesus making food and feeding his crowds, washing feet, lifting prostitutes off the dusty ground, holding squirmy babies, and giving His life that he reached hearts, I realized that it is through serving my children that their hearts would be opened.

What does it mean to practice servant leadership as a mother? I believe it starts out with a choice. I often sacrificed my own needs and desires for the purpose of giving them what they need and modeling for them the depths of Christ's love.

For me, choosing servanthood meant sitting on a child's bed, listening to sorrows, encouraging them — when I would rather have had time to myself. It meant being exhausted from caring for three children under six, yet still getting up in the middle of the night to soothe the pain of an ear infection. It meant making the effort to plan an outing — a picnic lunch, a drive to the mountains, a favorite audio book — even though I had a million other things to do.

Learning to give up our expectations keeps us from becoming angry when our expectations of life don't turn out exactly as we thought. Children have been the same from the beginning — growing, eating, making messes, crying, laughing, playing and going from infant to adult over many years, with much love along the way.

Read more about this in The Ministry of Motherhood.